Video 14:30
NT's mandatory treatment for alcoholics

Transcript

EMMA ALBERICI, PRESENTER: When Adam Giles was sworn in as Chief Minister three months ago, he became the first Indigenous head of government of an Australian state or territory. I caught up with Adam Giles a short time ago to discuss his controversial alcohol plans.

Adam Giles, thanks for joining us on Lateline.

ADAM GILES, NT CHIEF MINISTER: Thank you.

EMMA ALBERICI: Now you want to lock innocent people up for three months. Isn't that criminalising public drunkenness?

ADAM GILES: What we as a government want to do is provide an opportunity for those chronic alcoholics in the Northern Territory to be able to receive some form of rehabilitation, in this case mandatory. We are putting in place mandatory rehabilitation measures for those people who are chronic alcoholics, are people who have substance abuse issues which in turn leads to the detriment of their well-being, their lifestyle and has a negative impact on their children and their families. In the Northern Territory, it is a significant issue for a small number of people in the Northern Territory who continually get drunk to points and to a state where these people can cause harm to themselves and often find themselves in lock-up at night in the interests of protecting them and others around them.

EMMA ALBERICI: The Australian Medical Association says your legislation fails to recognise that these people are sick, not criminal.

ADAM GILES: I think what people need to understand is in the Northern Territory we have a fundamental issue where some people, under the confines of a welfare-dependent society, abuse alcohol on a regular occasion. Quite often these people participate in things such as domestic violence, which is a significant issue in the Northern Territory, and rather than these people commit acts of domestic violence and other crime around society and end up in jail, we want these people to be taken off the streets and given opportunity to be rehabilitated, at least to get them off the grog for three months. If you have a look over the last 12 months, there have been 2,500 cases in the Northern Territory, 2,500 cases of alcohol-related domestic violence. This means that women are getting beaten up 2,500 times in the last 12 months that we know about, where the negative state of the woman who has been beaten, the impact that that has on the child and the extended family in a situation where that person will more than likely end up in jail. We have taken a position that we want to see people have the opportunity to be rehabilitated. It is a voluntary or mandatory arrangement and we believe this is in the best interests of assisting those people who've got alcohol concerns.

I do hear from lot of people concerns, not so much about the legislation, there are lot of people who think we are doing the right thing. There may be some concerns around the edges, but there is a loud brigade of people who are running a rights-based argument to say that this just isn't right. And I would challenge those people about us as a government and how we govern in our interests to put at the first premise the rights of a family, the rights of a child to a safe environment, the rights of a woman not to be beaten 2,500 times in the Northern Territory. We have to put all these rights in there. And also the rights of the person who has that chronic alcohol abuse issue, we want to help those people. And if it means that we have to mandatorily detain people to provide that alcohol rehabilitation service, get people off the grog, which we know rehabilitation doesn't have 100 per cent success rate, but we are allowing those people to be off the grog for three months and try and rehabilitate them so that they can get the cognitive uses of their brain to a position where they can start to make decisions after that three-month period. If they go back on the grog, well they've had a chance for rehabilitation and they'll get that chance again. But this isn't a rights-based argument about the person being imprisoned, this is about the rights of the family and the child who lives in a drunken environment.

EMMA ALBERICI: I want to challenge your claim that many people think you are doing the right thing, because the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency has raised concerns, doctors and the Australian Medical Association, lawyers and Aboriginal leaders have also criticised the legislation, and then you've got the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Mick Gooda who's doubting the legality of the scheme. Who in the health or the Aboriginal community thinks this is a good idea?

ADAM GILES: Well plenty of women who have been beaten. Plenty of children who ...

EMMA ALBERICI: No, experts who know what works I guess is what I'm asking you. Of course women don't want to be beaten up and don't want a husband or another male figure coming home in a drunken state and causing a ruckus, but what's at issue here is whether your particular scheme will work and so many experts think it won't.

ADAM GILES: There are a lot of experts who don't think it'll work, but for the last 11 years of the previous government up here in the Northern Territory, those experts didn't stand up for those people who are committing those acts of domestic violence. There was no measure put in place. Now we've taken government and recognised that this is a serious issue and we're prepared to move forward on this. Now, if there are other experts out there who think that it's an issue but don't like the way we're heading, well why weren't they voicing their concerns over the last 11 years and trying to stand up for those people who've got those chronic alcohol abuse issues and the women and children that suffer. We've have advice from our department which says that this legislation is legal legislation. We are putting in place these measures because we want those people who've got those chronic alcohol abuse issues, we want those people to be assisted and we want to be able to provide a safer environment in our community, particularly the families from where those people come from. Now I do hear those concerns and we are trying to ensure that our legislative framework that we will be putting in place meets as many of those concerns as possible. But, let's not, um - let's not get in the middle of ...

EMMA ALBERICI: Can you point to a single expert in the health field or indeed in the Aboriginal community who supports the legislation you're proposing?

ADAM GILES: There's a lot of people in the NT, Aboriginal community or otherwise, who support this legislation.

EMMA ALBERICI: I'm asking you to just name one.

ADAM GILES: I'm not gonna name people publicly who live in the community of the NT to say that they come out and support this. If you want to go and talk to people who support it, you're more than welcome to come to the Territory and asked people around society ...

EMMA ALBERICI: I've named a number who don't support it.

ADAM GILES: Mm. Well I invite you to come to the Territory, we'll walk the streets and we can go and meet people on the street who do support it. But I would also ask you to get those experts who are vehemently opposed to this legislation and ask them what they propose to do about the people who are chronically drunk and ask them what they did for the last 11 years while these people were committing acts of domestic violence. In the last five years, while there were - under the previous government, the rates of alcohol-related domestic violence increased 35 per cent so that it's 2,500 cases this year. Now we have to act, we have to do something about that, and if other people want to bring forward ideas about how to address these cases, I'm more than happy to hear them.

EMMA ALBERICI: The Prime Minister has in fact accused you of allowing the rivers of grog to flow again. What's your response to that?

ADAM GILES: Well I was very interested this morning to pick up The Australian and see that the Prime Minister has allegedly sent me a letter. I hadn't received the letter, but I about it - read parts of it in the newspaper. It's not about allowing the rivers of grog to flow ...

EMMA ALBERICI: So you haven't received that letter - sorry, can we just clarify. You haven't received a letter? You didn't receive one on Tuesday from the Prime Minister, as is alleged?

ADAM GILES: We hadn't received a letter. We rung up the Prime Minister's office this afternoon and demanded to get an electronic copy of that letter. We've since received it late this afternoon and had the chance to look through it. We read about it in the paper early this morning. This is the modus operandi ...

EMMA ALBERICI: And you can categorically say you never received it?

ADAM GILES: 100 per cent. This is how Minister Macklin normally operates and it seems to me that the Prime Minister is now adopting the same approach of saying a letter's been sent and giving it to the media before we actually receive it. So, I was very interested to see that in the newspaper this morning, but we'll respond to that letter in due course. We've since contacted the Prime Minister's office and received a copy.

EMMA ALBERICI: Sure. Well let's get to the context of the letter and in fact that's - it's mostly around obviously your new legislation and the fact that you have abandoned the Banned Drinkers Register. Why did you scrap a scheme that made it illegal for thousands of chronic drinkers to buy alcohol?

ADAM GILES: Well it didn't make - the scheme didn't make people become banned from buying alcohol. You couldn't buy alcohol from a takeaway outlet, but you could still buy it from a pub, from a club, from a licensed venue. You could still get alcohol through the means of breaking into property, commercial, residential or otherwise and obtaining alcohol. And what we saw through that period, as I've mentioned before, was a vast increase in the acts of alcohol-related domestic violence, a significant increase in the prison population, Indigenous prison population included, to the point where we got to 131 per cent capacity of our jails. And what the Banned Drinkers Register wasn't doing, it wasn't stopping people from actually drinking, it was stopping them from buying takeaway alcohol. There are occurrences where people were picked up in protective custody - which means people were so drunk they had to be put into a police cell to protect themselves - there were cases where people were picked up 117 times, 117 times while they were on the register. I think clearly when you're getting up to that point, the register's not working 'cause people are still obtaining alcohol. And if all it did was stop people buying at takeaway, I think there's a mountain of evidence that said people were still obtaining it.

And when I read that letter from the Prime Minister and she talks about the rivers of grog, I would challenge the Prime Minister that if she was so concerned, why did she use Federal Government funding to fund an Aboriginal organisation in Alice Springs to buy three takeaway liquor outlets and supermarkets, the takeaway liquor outlets of which sell or their revenue generates - revenue is generated from 30 per cent of the profits out of those takeaway liquor outlets. There are Indigenous organisations running takeaway outlets in Alice Springs, three of the biggest, which contribute to the sale of alcohol. 30 per cent of their sales from the supermarket and liquor outlets comes from liquor. These are people who have been breached. We have supply measures in Alice Springs around when you can buy grog. You can't buy grog till two o'clock in the afternoon, you can't buy it after nine, you can only buy one bottle of spirits, you can't by fortified till after six. But these grog outlets, which the Prime Minister and her government have funded, have breached the licensing requirements which she so vehemently supports. So I think you can't have your cake and eat it too. I think what the Prime Minister's trying to do is politicise something in the leadup to an election.

EMMA ALBERICI: Under your plan, you want to be able to quarantine $170 a week from an alcoholic's welfare payments to cover the cost of the rehabilitation program. Now, wouldn't that deny their families money that might be better spent feeding and clothing wives and children?

ADAM GILES: Oh, look, we'll always make sure that there's enough - sufficient income for families to be able to feed their children. But what we are saying is when you are in that mandatory rehabilitation environment, we believe that you should contribute to your accommodation. This is a situation that already occurs in voluntary rehabilitation centres in the Northern Territory. We think that should be extended to the mandatory rehabilitation centres.

EMMA ALBERICI: Quite apart from anything else, isn't the management of those welfare payments the purview of the Federal Government?

ADAM GILES: Well it is the purview of the Federal Government. We thought the Federal Government might have come on and supported us with this measure. What we wanted to see was the welfare quarantining component moved from 50 per cent to 70 per cent for those people who have those chronic alcohol abuse problems in an effort to try and stop them from buying alcohol.

EMMA ALBERICI: And how have negotiations with the Government been going? How would you describe your relationship with the Prime Minister at this point?

ADAM GILES: Well, the relationship with the Prime Minister I think is clearly evident by finding a letter sent from the PM to me in a story in The Australian today. I think that's clearly evident of how the relationship is.

EMMA ALBERICI: On the matter of Gonski, have you been lobbied by Tony Abbott or any member of his team to reject the Prime Minister's offer of education funding?

ADAM GILES: We've been in conversation - I think I've had one meeting with Christopher Pyne, the Shadow Federal Education Minister, on what his interpretation of the Gonski model is and what any alternative model will be. It was very interesting to have those conversations, but the content of those conversations haven't shed any difference to our position in the Northern Territory and how we have seen the Gonski proposal put to us and how our position has been displayed in terms of us not accepting that at this point in time.

EMMA ALBERICI: When you say Christopher Pyne presented an alternative position, did that involve a certain level of money in return for your support?

ADAM GILES: Not at all. We won't play politics in the federal sphere in the interests of Territorians. The Gonski model that we've been put - that has been put on the table for the Northern Territory does not represent our best interests in how we move forward. I think it's a case of smoke and mirrors in the offer that's been put on the table. We do continue behind the scenes to work with the Prime Minister's office to see if we can get a better model put in place, but the current model that's there is not gonna suit the interests and the needs of Territory schoolchildren.

EMMA ALBERICI: Is there still a chance then that by June 30 you'll sign up?

ADAM GILES: Look, if the model was improved, we would consider signing up, most definitely. But currently it's not a two-for-one deal for us. We have a significantly higher level of base funding which we provide to our schools, the highest in the country. And in the model that the Prime Minister has put up, despite the rhetoric, we will have to provide a dollar for every 33 cents that the Federal Government put in. That model doesn't work for us. I know it might work for some other states who don't fund as highly as we do on a per capita basis for education, but the model financially doesn't work. And the other issue is that the full funding of that model doesn't come out till 2019, which is three federal elections away, and here we are sitting here in June now, we don't know who the Prime Minister is gonna be in September 14th and in some cases we don't even know who it's gonna be tomorrow. So we want to make sure that we have a level playing field. We want certainty of education funding into the future and the model that we've received as an offer isn't right. We'll continue to work with the Prime Minister's office, but at this point in time, we won't be signing.

EMMA ALBERICI: Chief Minister, we're out of time. I thank you so much for speaking to us this evening.